St. Louis Gives Andy Murray the Axe.

Bryankreutz 77/Wikipedia

The cries of “fire Andy Murray!” amongst Blues fans apparently resonated more with the management than the “trade the team!” cries did.  John Davidson announced this morning that the St. Louis Blues have fired coach Andy Murray and named Peoria Rivermen head coach Davis Payne as the interim head coach.

One can only hope that this will have the same impact as the Penguins naming Bylsma “interim” coach.  No, I’m not delusional and I don’t think Coach Payne will lead us to the Cup with the team that we have now.  But sometimes a coach’s message gets lost, or purposefully tuned out, and that happened both in Pittsburgh and in St. Louis.  Therrien was gruff and basically out and out unlikable (see: rumors that Hossa left because of him); Murray by all accounts is a nice guy, but his coaching style puts an unfair amount of responsibility on the youth of the organization.  The players tuned him out – Berglund’s mini-breakdown and benching was due to him playing scared, to him being worried that Murray would ream him for screwing up.  As Wysh over at Puck Daddy pointed out, the Blues have 14 players under the age of 30.  And, quite frankly, half of your team is too many people to have playing scared.

You can bench people to “send a message,” but when you make a point out of only benching the youth who are still learning while the vets who should know better get off scott free, there’s a problem.  When you make a habit of blaming a humiliating loss on one player, like Murray did with the loss at home to Edmonton, there’s a bigger problem.  David Perron was not the reason we lost that game – the whole team’s awful play is the cause.  You can’t single out individual players in the press and expect them to positively respond.  I’m sorry, but it’s not do-able.  Perron gets blamed for losses, Johnson has a bad few games and gets benched, yet vets like Brewer and Kariya are allowed to have massively bad stretches and nothing is done.  I never heard Murray come out and say “Yeah, that loss is on Brewer.  Way to kick the puck into our own net, and be on the ice for every goal scored.  Thanks.”

This decision was a long time coming, and John Davidson may have showed too much patience in his decision – the absurd amount of losses at home are inexcusable and will drive fans away.  But firing Murray the morning of a big game against the rival Chicago Blackhawks sends a message.  The Blues always play rough against the ‘Hawks.  Now they have another reason to play hard.  From all accounts, Payne isn’t a slacker coach, either, but he places accountability on where it needs to be, not on the youngest person in the room.

Best of luck to the Green Goblin.  Blues fans appreciate the guidance that he’s given the team for the past three years – it’s a shame it didn’t stick.

Quick addendum, so this doesn’t become a moan and groan session, congrats to David Backes and Erik Johnson being named to the USA’s men’s ice hockey team, and congrats to Roman Polak in being named to the Czech team.

Posted by Laura Astorian on Jan 2 2010. Filed under Central, St. Louis Blues, Uncategorized, Western Conference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.